Milkweed

“ They have an excessive health, an exuberance of vitality; a full-blooded race, if you so much as break a leaf from one it bleeds like a wounded creature. From the mud, the swamp-milkweed has derived some rich hue, while the butterfly-weed in the pasture has caught the very sunshine itself and become a living flame. ”

“ The flowers we like best are the clover, milkweed, goldenrod, thistle and phlox.
I soon discovered that birds and insects did not trouble us much, because we do not suit their appetites. They say that we taste bitter and disagreeable, like the milkweed, so they seldom disturb us, and we lead a happy-go-lucky life. We often spread our wings wide and float along in the air with little fear of foes. They see our colors—yellow and black, the badge of the milkweed butterfly—and off they go seeking a choicer tidbit. ”

“ Its leaves are lance-shaped or oblong-lanceolate, whereas the purple milkweed's leaves are oblong or ovate-oblong. This is a smooth plant; and a similar species once reckoned as a mere variety (A. pulchra) is the HAIRY MILKWEED. It differs chiefly in having some hairs on the under side of its leaves, and a great many hairs on its stem. Both plants bear erect, rather slender, tapering pods.
The POKE or TALL MILKWEED (A. exaltata - A. phytolaecoides of Gray) may attain a height of six feet if the moist soil in which it grows be exactly to its liking. ”

“ Milkweeds have pretty, fragrant flowers that grow together, many in a bunch, but not close together into a solid head, like the little dandelion flowers. Each milkweed flower has its own little stem.
Not all of the flowers in a bunch of milkweed go to seed. Generally only one or two from each bunch do. The rest are crowded out and wither and fall off, for the milkweed flower develops a very large seed pod that holds a great many seeds, and there is not room on the stem for many of these big pods. ”

“ Here are two bees, a fly, and a beetle, each hanging dead by its legs from a flower, an extreme sacrificial penalty, which is singularly frequent, but which was certainly not exacted nor contemplated in the design of the flower. A careful search among almost any good-sized cluster of milkweeds will show us many such prisoners. As in all flowers, the pollen of the milkweed blossom must come in contact with its stigma before fruition is possible. ”

“ Ants, the worst pilferers of nectar extant, find the hairy stem of the whorled milkweed, as well as its sticky juice, most discouraging, if not fatal, obstacles to climbing. How daintily the goldfinch picks at the milkweed pods and sets adrift the seeds attached to silky aeronautic fluff! ”

“ Summers came and went, but only a few straggling blooms made their way above the mass of weeds. In early Autumn, thistles and milkweed took possession of the place, the mournful purple of their flowering hiding the garden beneath trappings of woe. And at night, when the Autumn moon shone dimly, frail ghosts of dead flowers were set free from the thistles and milkweed. The wind of Indian Summer, itself a ghost, convoyed them about the garden, but they never went beyond it. Each year the panoply of purple spread farther, more surely hiding the brave blooms beneath. ”

“ The leaves are large and of a yellow, gray-green color, while the flowers which grow in clusters are of a pink-lavender shade.
But the little pods filled with seeds are the things the children like and if you see a milkweed plant just look at the little pods.
“I must have milk to drink and to make me strong,” said Milly Milkweed.
“So must I,” said Mamie Milkweed.
“And not only does it make us strong,” said Milly, “but it gives strength to the butterflies which feast upon us, for if we are strong and delicious it makes them strong and beautiful. ”

“ Sometimes children catch bees in empty milkweed pods. The bees make a great buzzing in the pod, and it is not fair to keep them long, for it interferes with their honey-gathering or pollen-collecting. If there is anything a bee hates, it is to waste time, with so many hungry mouths at home waiting to be fed.
Like the thistles, when the milkweed seeds become quite dry they often drop away from their plumes, particularly if they strike against something when sailing about.
There are a number of species of milkweeds. One common species has bright, orange flowers, and is called butterfly weed. ”

“ FLOWERS WITH HORNS AND CLAWS. E. F. MOSBY.
THE milkweed is best known to most of us by its pods—long, rough cases, packed close with shining white silk attached to little brown seeds. The lightest wind that blows can carry these a stage or two on their journey with such lovely silken sails. But perhaps everyone has not noticed one rather strange thing about them. Almost always there are two pods, one vigorous of growth, large and full ”

“ Almost any bee which we may catch at random upon a milkweed gives perfect evidence of his surroundings, its toes being decorated with the tiny yellow tags, each successive flower giving and taking, exchanging compliments, as it were, with his fellows. ”

“ In Europe our goldenrod is cultivated in the flower gardens, as well it may be. The native species is found mainly in woods, and is much less showy than ours.
Our milkweed is tenacious of life; its roots lie deep, as if to get away from the plow, but it seldom infests cultivated crops. Then its stalk is so full of milk and its pod so full of silk that one cannot but ascribe good intentions to it, if it does sometimes overrun the meadow. ”

“ Every butterfly in the whole region makes it his business to know each large clump of milkweed, and to make the rounds at least daily.
There, if you watch, you may see the pretty little pearl crescent, whose range is from Labrador to Texas. The shy meadow browns flit out from the shadow of the brook alders and feed for a moment before they take fright at the fact that they are out in society and flit desperately back again. ”

“ The seed-pods of the Milkweeds are most interesting; rough on the outside, they are beautifully finished within, with a fine, smooth, light lining. The silky plumes of the flat-brown seeds are closely folded together and the seeds lie overlapping like the scales of a fish. The light green outside of the Butterfly-Weed pod, tinged with crimson-tawny, becomes with age a fine tree-trunk gray. ”

“ This is that milkweed from whose stems the Indians flayed fibre to make snares for small game, but what use the beetles put it to except for a displaying ground for their gay coats, I could never discover. The white butterfly crop comes on with the bigelovia bloom, and on warm mornings makes an airy twinkling all across the field. In September young linnets grow out of the rabbit-brush in the night. All the nests discoverable in the neighboring orchards will not account for the numbers of them. ”

“ The method of compelling visitors to withdraw pollen-masses from one blossom and deposit them in another - an amazing process - has been already described under the common milkweed. Lacking the quantity of sticky milky juice which protects that plant from crawling pilferers, the butterfly-weed suffers outrageous robberies from black ants. The hairs on its stem, not sufficient to form a stockade against them, serve only as a screen to reflect light lest too much may penetrate to the interior juices. ”

“ All over the world there are plants with the same ability that the milkweed has, but it is especially true of certain trees and vines of the tropics. As soon as the little beetle begins to bore into the bark of one of these trees, there pours out a sticky, milky fluid that kills the insect at once. ”

“ The other forms are taller and have chiefly purplish to red flowers, occasionally white. The flowers are much modified for insect-pollination, the pollen-grains clinging together in masses which are carried off by the insects bodily. Probably the commonest known milkweed is A. cornuti, also known as A. syriaca. The weed has a stout, tall stem and opposite leaves, six to eight inches long. In early summer it puts forth flowers of purplish pink, blooming from June to August. The two pods are full to bursting of seeds with lovely, silky tufts. ”

“ There is another kind of a milkweed which is very cruel, for it attracts small insects by its odor, and when they come they are caught by a sticky substance and held until the weed sucks them down and really eats them, much as we eat our food. ”

“ Drooping or spreading umbels of flowers whose corolla segments are pale purplish green, and whose crown is clear ivory white or pink, appear from June to August from Maine to Georgia and far westward. Sometimes the tapering oblong leaves may be nine inches long. The erect seedpods are drawn out to an unusually long point.
One may always distinguish the low-growing FOUR-LEAVED MILKWEED (A. quadrifolia) from its relatives of ranker growth by its general air of refinement, as well as by the two pairs of thin, tapering leaves that grow in an upright whorl near the middle of the slender stem. ”

“ Seed of Milkweed, with a Coma or tuft of long silky hairs at one end.
382. The shape and the markings, so various in different seeds, depend mostly on the outer coat. Sometimes this fits the kernel closely; sometimes it is expanded into a wing, as in the Trumpet-Creeper (Fig. 415) , and occasionally this wing is cut up into shreds or tufts, as in the Catalpa (Fig. 416) ; or instead of a wing it may bear a Coma, or tuft of long and soft hairs, as in the Milkweed or Silkweed (Fig. 417) . The use of wings, or downy tufts is to render the seeds buoyant [Pg 126] for dispersion by the winds. ”

“ Some wonderful instinct leads the animal to deposit the eggs on the milkweed, for the young feed upon no other plant. The eggs hatch out in four or five days into rapid-growing wormlike caterpillars, each of which will shed its skin several times before it becomes full size. These caterpillars possess, in addition to the three pairs of true legs, additional pairs of prolegs or caterpillar legs. The animal at this stage is known as a larva.
Monarch butterfly: adults, larvæ, and pupa on their food plant, the milkweed. ”

“ As soon as hatched the larva devours the eggshell from which it has escaped and then feeds voraciously on the milkweed leaves. It grows rapidly, and in three or four days a blackish band or ring appears on each segment, and for the rest of its life it is very conspicuously colored with its black rings on a yellowish-green background. ”

“ The chewink jingles on a bush’s top. Why will the Irishman drink of a puddle by the railroad instead of 314 digging a well? How shiftless! What death in life! He cannot be said to live who does not get pure water.
The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed; its buds fly open at a touch. But handsomer much is Asclepias pulchra, or water silkweed. The thin green bark of this last, and indeed of the other, is so strong that a man cannot break a small strip of it by pulling. ”

“ Better than any written description of the milkweed blossom's mechanism is a simple experiment. If you have neither time nor patience to sit in the hot sun, magnifying-glass in hand, and watch for an unwary insect to get caught, take an ordinary house-fly, and hold it by the wings so that it may claw at one of the newly-opened flowers from which no pollinia have been removed. ”

“ Weeds are again discouraging because they have such facilities for travel. Talk about flying machines—weeds are centuries ahead of men along these lines. Look at a milkweed seed; it is a complete flying apparatus. With its perfect ballast it flies beautifully along over field and river ready to alight in proper seed style, end down. ”

“ As in the study of insects, so in that of plants—observation in the field at every stage of growth and development is needful to supplement the disclosures of the microscope and the dissecting needle. Many species, of which the milkweed blossom may stand as a type, are absolutely dependent on insects for their fertilization. ”

“ They generally grow in waste places, along stone walls, or outside fences, where they do no harm to the crops but make the roadsides charming. Most kinds of milkweeds have a milky juice, as their name tells. ”

“ The wild roses were wide open and brilliant, the blue-eyed grass was in purple flower, and the silvery milkweed was just coming on. ”

“ Young milkweed is better than spinach, and also makes an excellent salad. Probably all the salad leaves could be cooked to advantage. Rhubarb leaves and horseradish tops are garden greens usually neglected most unfairly. ”

“ This differentiation extends to all parts of the plant and gives character to leaves, stem, flowers and fruit. Marvellous is the art worked out in the minute parts. The tendril of the Passion Flower, the radicle of a Seedling Maple, the feathery hair on a stalk of Mullein—all these are shaped according to the unknown [Pg 102] law of beauty. Probably every geometrical form exists in some seed pod or fruit. The artistic little seeds of the Milkweed and the Dandelion are packed into their containers with a skill which cannot be duplicated, once they are dislodged. ”

“ Few if any of our native plants add more to the beauty of the midsummer landscape than the milkweeds, and of this family no member is more satisfying to the color-craving eye than the gorgeous butterfly-weed, whose vivid flower-clusters flame from the dry sandy meadows with such luxuriance of growth as to seem almost tropical. Even in the tropics one hardly sees anything more brilliant than the great masses of color made by these flowers along some of our New England railways in July, while farther south they are said to grow even more profusely. ”

“ As the foot is thus forcibly torn away, the pollen mass is commonly scraped entirely off and retained within the fissure, or perhaps parts at the stalk, leaving the terminal disc clinging on the insect's leg. Occasionally, when more than one leg is entangled, the dangling blossom is tossed and swayed for several seconds by the vigorous pulling and buzzing, and a number of these temporary captives upon a single milkweed-plant are always to be seen. ”